Shinseki initiating removal of senior leaders at Phoenix VA

Shinseki initiating removal of senior leaders at Phoenix VA

WASHINGTON — Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki says he’s initiated the removal of senior leaders of the Phoenix VA medical center. He made the remarks in an address at an annual conference for the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans in Washington.

[Previous story, 8:06 a.m.]

President Obama said he will have a “serious conversation” with Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki about whether he’s the right person to address the veterans’ care crisis.

The comment, made during an interview taped Thursday for “Live! with Kelly and Michael,” was played on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Friday.

With calls for him to resign hanging over his head, Shinseki on Friday will face representatives of people particularly vulnerable to his agency’s medical failings.

The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans has booked Shinseki as its featured speaker at its annual conference in Washington.

He will stand before them while lawmakers consider whom to hold responsible for a scandal involving the treatment of ailing veterans.

Long delays in medical care cost some of them their lives, and it has recently come to light that at least one hospital tied employee bonuses to patient wait times.

In the latest accusation, U.S. Reps. Mike Doyle and Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania issued a press release saying 700 veterans had been placed on a primary care waiting list for doctor appointments at the Pittsburgh VA center, with some waiting since 2012.

President Barack Obama appears to be asking Shinseki to set the stage for his own departure, perhaps as soon as Friday.

Late Thursday, a ranking Democratic Congressman on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee joined colleagues from both sides of the aisle to demand he throw in the towel.

“Democrats and Republicans alike, in tandem with our Veteran Service Organizations and the millions of Americans who have served our nation, all want to get to the bottom of what exactly is broken with the VA system, and what we can do to fix it,” Mike Michaud said in a statement.

But Shinseki has become the focal point, and it is time for him to go, so progress can be made, he said.

“The systemic failures in our VA system are inexcusable and must be fixed immediately so that this never happens again,” he said.

A number of Democratic senators — many of them facing rough re-election battles this year — have joined the bipartisan chorus urging the secretary to resign or the President to fire him.

“The inspector general’s preliminary report makes it clear that the systemic problems at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs are so entrenched that they require new leadership to be fixed,” said Mark Udall of Colorado, the first Senate Democrat to call for a change at the top.

Criminal investigation

Resignation may be just a prelude to the fallout to come.

There have also been calls for a criminal investigation into at times deadly delays in care at Veterans Affairs hospitals.

Obama is waiting for an internal audit he ordered from Shinseki on the growing scandal before deciding whom to hold accountable, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.

Carney stopped short of saying Obama is standing by the embattled secretary, pointing instead to the President’s recent statement that Shinseki would likely not be interested in continuing to serve if he believed he let veterans down.

The President found the report deeply troubling, and a White House official speaking on the condition of anonymity told CNN that Shinseki was on “thin ice” with Obama.

Some lawmakers in Congress were incensed after Wednesday’s release of a preliminary VA inspector general’s report that described a “systemic” practice of manipulating appointments and wait lists at the Veterans Affairs medical center in Phoenix.

The VA inspector general reported that at least 1,700 military veterans waiting to see a doctor were never scheduled for an appointment or were placed on a waiting list at the Phoenix VA, raising the question of just how many more may have been “forgotten or lost” in the system.

CNN broke the scandal

CNN reported exclusively last month that, according to sources, at least 40 American veterans died while waiting to be seen at the Phoenix VA. CNN also obtained an e-mail that an employee at a Wyoming clinic of the VA wrote saying that employees were instructed to “game the system” to make the clinic appear more efficient.

Rep. Steve Israel of New York, the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is among those calling for a criminal investigation by the Department of Justice.

“I want to know if anybody at the VA doctored papers, engaged in a cover up, withheld care from veterans,” he told CNN, adding the demand in the form of a letter was hand delivered Thursday to Attorney General Eric Holder’s office.

“They need to be investigated They need to be prosecuted. They need to be fired.”

Republican Rep. Jeff Miller of Florida, chairman of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, made a similar demand of the Justice Department.

“I think the facts are too many now for them to look the other way,” he said.

The U.S. Department of Justice is reviewing the VA inspector general’s report but has not formally opened an investigation, Peter Carr, an agency spokesman, has told CNN.

Deaths acknowledged

The VA has acknowledged 23 deaths nationwide due to delayed care. The VA’s acting inspector general, Richard Griffin, told a Senate committee in recent weeks that his investigation so far had found a possible 17 deaths of veterans waiting for care in Phoenix.

But he added that there was no evidence excessive waiting was the reason.

Among the findings at the Phoenix VA, investigators determined that one consequence of manipulating appointments for the veterans was understating patient wait times, a factor considered in VA employee bonuses and raises, the report said.

Miller believes the actions may be in part about money for “VA bureaucrats.”

“Why else would somebody work so hard to manipulate the lists?” Miller said.

The issue of patient wait times is not an overall performance factor ordered by the VA, Dr. Thomas Lynch, the VA’s assistant deputy undersecretary for clinical operations, told Miller’s committee.

The factors tied to bonuses and raises are decided by each VA network, Lynch said.

The VA inspector general’s report did not offer any further details about financial incentives.

Shinseki “not waiting”

In an opinion piece published Thursday in USA Today, Shinseki wrote that he found the report “reprehensible” and that he’s “not waiting to set things straight.”

“I immediately directed the Veterans Health Administration … to contact each of the 1,700 veterans in Phoenix waiting for primary care appointments in order to bring them the care they need and deserve,” Shinseki wrote.

Shinseki reiterated other steps he’s taken, including putting the leadership at the Phoenix facility on leave and ordering a “nationwide audit of all other major VA health care facilities to ensure understanding of, and compliance with, our appointment policy.”

Some question whether removing Shinseki would address the core problems at the VA or simply serve as a distraction for now.

“Is him resigning going to get us to the bottom of the problem? Is it going to help us find out what’s really going on?,” asked House Speaker John Boehner, the chamber’s top Republican, adding that his answer so far was “no.”

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi also warned against targeting only Shinseki.

She, too, has joined the push for a criminal investigation of the VA problems, saying “certainly what was done was dishonest.”